• What is something empirical?
• Empiricism
• empirical knowledge
• Examples of empirical knowledge
• empirical evidence
• non-empirical insights

We explain what something empirical is and what empiricism is. Also, what are the characteristics and types of empirical knowledge.

The empirical is demonstrable and can be experienced directly.

What is something empirical?

The empirical is that which is based on experience and in the observation of the facts. This term comes from the Greek word empirikos, translatable as "experienced", that is, something that has been tried or tested before making a decision. Thus, one can speak ofempirical knowledge”, of “empirical evidence” or even of “empiricism” (an important philosophical perspective that emerged in northern Europe during the Middle Ages).

In general, when we say that something is empirical we mean that it is demonstrable and that it can be experienced directly, that is, that it is not supported by theories not by assumptions, but by facts.

One of the procedures used to describe the scientific method (on which all the conclusions scientific) is known as the empirical-analytical method and consists in verifying through contrasting or perception of the facts hypothesis initial, that is, an empirical verification. For this you can go to experiments, observations either measurements.

The term “empirical” can be used in different areas of knowledge and in different contexts, always as a synonym for “effective”, “experimental”, “observable” or even “real”, “concrete”, “irrefutable”.

Empiricism

Philosophers like John Locke held that knowledge comes from the study of experiences.

The philosophical current of empiricism is one that defends the role of experience, sensory perception and real evidence in the formulation of ideas and of knowledge. That is to say, this current maintains with greater or lesser rigidity that the only possible knowledge is that which is derived from experience and from the sensible world, that is, from what we can directly perceive and experience.

Empiricism arose at the end of the Middle Ages and beginnings of Renaissance, in the United Kingdom, in direct opposition to the rationalism, since for the latter human reason and its ability to deduction It was the main access route to knowledge.

Thus, while rationalism prevailed in France, the Netherlands and Germany, at the hands of René Descartes (1596-1650), Nicolás Malebranche (1638-1715) and Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), among other renowned philosophers, in the Empiricism spread in the United Kingdom thanks to the works of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), George Berkeley (1685-1753), John Locke (1632-1704) and David Hume (1711-1776). . So much so that this philosophical tradition was baptized as "English empiricism".

According to empiricists, human knowledge can only be obtained a posteriori, that is, as a result of the evaluation and study of lived experiences. For this, sensation (information from the senses) and reflection (mental operations) are combined. Thus, two fundamental types of ideas are formed:

• Simple ideas, born from the processing of sensations.
• Complex ideas, born from the abstraction and complexification of simple ideas.

empirical knowledge

Empirical knowledge arises directly from our encounter with reality.

Empirical knowledge is that obtained through experience and direct perception of the world, and not from preconceptions, theories or imaginations.It is one of the types of knowledge that sustain the scientific knowledge, and was the contribution to modern thought of the empiricist doctrine born at the end of the 19th century in the United Kingdom.

Empirical knowledge is obtained from the observation of reality and the mental processing of these impressions. Thus, two types of empirical knowledge can be formulated:

• special empirical knowledge. When it applies to a specific situation or context, and its compliance cannot be assured in all possible cases.
• Contingent empirical knowledge. When it applies to a current situation whose validity or extension over time cannot be predicted or guaranteed.

In any case, purely empirical knowledge has the following characteristics:

• It is based on experience. It arises directly from our encounter with reality, without previous hypotheses.
• It depends on the sensory. Their main source of information is the senses, what they capture from the inner and outer reality.
• It is subjective. Since not all individuals perceive reality in the same way, empirical knowledge may vary depending on each person.
• It is communicable, but not verifiable. Since we have no other access to the experiences of others than language, we can know what another experiences but we cannot verify if it is true.
• It has no methods of its own. Depending on the senses and experience, it does not put into practice definite methods.

Examples of empirical knowledge

Examples of empirical knowledge:

• The association between fire and pain with which children learn that fire burns.
• A mother's ability to know when her child cries from hunger, sleep, or other reasons.
• The possibility of predicting rainfall simply by looking at the color and shape of the clouds.
• The knowledge that allows recognizing which fruits are poisonous after having tasted them and having become ill.
• The notion that all objects in the world eventually fall.

empirical evidence

Empirical evidence is called tests or demonstrations of an empirical type, that is, that can be observed and experienced directly, without having to trust the word of another, or theories and assumptions.

An empirical evidence, for example, is the result of an experiment, in which the researchers directly observe what happened and can measure it, replicate it and reproduce it before third parties. East concept it is key in the emergence of scientific knowledge, since experimental methods seek, above all, empirical evidence that supports or refutes their postulates and hypotheses.

non-empirical insights

Non-empirical knowledge is ways of knowing that do not depend on direct experience of the world and that are not perceptible, that is, they cannot be grasped using the senses. For example:

• The religious knowledge or mystical. It is the one that is obtained from interpretations and dogmas that link to human being with the divine, that is, with the idea of ​​the existence of God and of a transcendent, sacred, non-verifiable order.
• The intuitive knowledge. It is the one that is obtained without any type of reasoning formal and that allows to anticipate the events that are about to happen, that is, to recognize in the reality their patterns and trends, even though they cannot be explained or transmitted to third parties.
• The philosophical knowledge. It is the one that is obtained through the application of human reason in the abstract, from postulates and reasoning of a logical or formal type that have little to do with the direct experimentation of things.